Hilton Kelley addresses a crowd gathered in a parking lot in the 600 block of Woodworth to discuss the VX nerve agent incineration at the Veolia Environmental Services in Port Arthur, TX Thursday, April 19, 2007. (Beaumont Enterprise, Tammy McKinley) less

Hilton Kelley addresses a crowd gathered in a parking lot in the 600 block of Woodworth to discuss the VX nerve agent incineration at the Veolia Environmental Services in Port Arthur, TX Thursday, April 19, ... more

(04-11) 04:00 PDT Port Arthur, Texas -- The public housing project where Hilton Kelley was born and raised sits in the shadows of two refineries that belch toxic chemicals into the air.

His mother moved him away from Carver Terrace long ago, but he is still here, waging what seems to be a one-man crusade in one of the nation's most polluted places. With many of this Gulf Coast town's poorest residents suffering from asthma, skin irritations and cancer, he has neither forgotten nor forgiven.

So for the past decade he has pushed and prodded, with a bit of shouting, for more restrictions on industrial construction and stricter monitoring of plant emissions.

And now, what once seemed like a quixotic pursuit - greater environmental and public health protections in a refinery town - no longer seems so quixotic.

"Port Arthur has been a dumping ground for years because this was the area of least resistance," Kelley says. "But this is a new day."

Winning 'Green Nobel'

For his work, Kelley is one of the 2011 winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize, sometimes called the Green Nobel as the highest honor of its kind for grassroots environmentalists.

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He will be in San Francisco today to receive the award, given annually to an environmentalist from each continent, and the $150,000 check that goes with it. Past winners have sought justice for victims of environmental disasters at Love Canal in New York and Bhopal, India, resisted oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and tried to prevent the U.S. military from incinerating chemical weapons.

Kelley, 50, came to environmentalism late and without any training in community organizing. He left Port Arthur for the Navy in 1979 and later settled in Oakland, where he worked as a stuntman and extra on movies and television shows filmed in the Bay Area. During a visit home for Mardi Gras in 2000, Kelley saw his once-vibrant town in a relentless decline - its storefronts shuttered, its fields filled with rusty debris, its residents sick and its children with nothing to do. He returned to his life in California, but not for long.

"I didn't see anyone doing anything about it," he said. "And then one day I looked in the mirror and said, 'I'm from Port Arthur. What am I doing about it?' "

Kelley recognized that the town could not pull itself back up without addressing the environmental problems first, but he knew change would not come easy in a community dependent on refineries and chemical plants for jobs. One of his early protests outside City Hall attracted only two other people, and one was his brother.

Hard-won victories

Port Arthur, near the Louisiana border, was built on oil wealth. The city's west side, which is largely African American, is home to eight major industrial plants, including Motiva and Valero oil refineries.

Without the support of many, including the mayor at the time, Kelley took a different tack, collecting air samples during "upset events," unpermitted releases caused by lightning strikes, human error, startups and shutdowns. He used the results, at a cost of $500 per sample, to prod regulators and the plants to take action.

Among his victories was a deal with an expanding refinery that included new pollution controls and a $3.5 million fund to support small businesses and provide health coverage for residents of Port Arthur's west side. He also managed to stop the shipment of highly toxic PCBs from Mexico for disposal at a nearby incinerator.

His efforts have made Port Arthur visible again. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency put it on a list of 10 cities nationwide that would receive attention and funding over two years to address disproportionate environmental burdens.

"I have a lot of respect for Hilton," said Al Armendariz, the EPA chief for Texas and four adjacent states. "I really admire his work. He cares a lot about his community, and he pushes our agency to do all we can to serve them. He is successful because he doesn't give up and because his goals are to help others."

So far, the discussions - which involve Kelley and representatives from the city, EPA and industry - have touched on the relocation of Carver Terrace, additional emissions reductions and an improved alarm network for upset events.

Kelley said his goal is not to close the refineries and chemical plants but to make them cleaner, so that Port Arthur may be able to regain a bit of its past self.

"We understand that Port Arthur may never be what it was, but it can be better than it is," he said recently while standing among a row of abandoned storefronts on Procter Street, once a main commercial strip in the city's downtown.

Focus on rebuilding

At the same time, his focus on rebuilding the city has put him at odds with other environmentalists. Kelley, for example, does not oppose the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring heavy crude from Canada's oil sands to the Port Arthur area for refining, because the city has a 17 percent unemployment rate.

"That pipeline will bring thousands of jobs," he said. "Our fight starts when we smell the sulfur. I'm hopeful that by the time the pipeline is done, the proper emissions controls will be in place."

Matthew Tejada, director of the environmental group Air Alliance Houston, said Kelley's position made him rethink how he does his job. It's easy for activists "in the treetops," like himself, to lose sight of the nuances at the grassroots level, Tejada said.

"He is one of the best environmental activists in the country because he takes his marching orders from the community," Tejada said. "It's not born out of idealism. It's about seeing the state of a community he loves and grew up in and doing something about it."

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